NEPTUNE Canada

Wally's "world tour"

Jan 06, 2010

A view of Wally at Barkley Hydrates after 2nd deployment, 19 September 2009. (Click to enlarge.)

On 19 December 2009, NEPTUNE Canada researchers from Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany drove Wally the Crawler on its first deep-sea scientific walkabout.

Wally was deployed in September 2009 to a cold seep site in one of Barkley Canyon’s gas hydrate fields. The world’s first Internet-operated deep-sea crawler is equipped with sensors to measure temperature, pressure, water currents, salinity, methane and turbidity. Wally also sports a pan/tilt webcam, affording detailed views of the seafloor sediments and local sea life.

Visualized positions of the waypoint markers comprising Wally’s World. (Click to enlarge.)

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A view of Wally’s World looking toward the northwest from waypoint marker 13. (Click to enlarge.)

After deployment, Wally underwent preliminary testing, but remained on standby for most of our commissioning period. The crawler sat silently on the seabed at a depth of 871m, connected to Barkley Hydrates Platform via a 70m umbilical cable.

On 19 December, the long wait ended for the working group in Bremen Germany, when they connected to Wally via Internet and took the crawler for its first tour of "Wally’s World", a series of numbered way markers arranged along a seafloor tour route. From a distance of 8500 km, scientists were able to log in, open the Oceans 2.0 Data Explorer and gain direct access to the incoming data stream from the study site.

During Wally’s first scientific crawl, the Bremen team captured images of many different organisms. Two red bottom fish (likely longspine thornyheads) accompanied Wally constantly. Tens of small spider crabs were observed crawling nearby.

Images captured from Wally’s webcam during its first scientific walkabout, 19 Dec 09. (Click to enlarge.)

Thriving communities of unusual methane-dependent mussels blanket the seabed surrounding these cold seeps. Ocean tides influence the movement of methane from the seafloor into bottom waters. When flow increases, energy-rich organic particles are drawn from the seeps to feed downstream bacteria and other organisms.

Wally sits atop a cold seep featuring gas hydrates (white) and a thriving population of mussels. (Click to enlarge.)

Since the 19 December crawl, Wally has been slowly moving away from the cold seep site to investigate surrounding sediments. Methane measurements decreased continuously as the crawler moved away from the hotspot ecosystem at the cold seep site.

Methane measurements by Wally on 19 December 2009.(Click to enlarge.)

German scientist Laurenz Thomsen reported, “The first trip with Wally was fantastic. The software tools provided by NEPTUNE allow a fast first interpretation of the data. It is a great pleasure for the German research team to be part of this Canadian science community.”

Upcoming

Wally's next schedule crawl is 12 January 2010. Video and data gathered during that crawl (as well as our full archive of data from Wally's instruments) will be available through our Data Explorer.

Related Links

Details on Wally and attached instruments

Related news stories

Laurenz Thomsen's website

Oceans 2.0 Data Explorer

Camera and instrument operation times are given on the NEPTUNE Canada calendar

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